Mason Jar Music Turns Empty Buildings into Recording Studios

Mason Jar Music Company turned the problem of under-capitalization into a challenge that it met by using abandoned buildings as music recording space. The start-up was looking for a recording space with the sound qualities of a classic music hall when it borrowed the keys to an abandoned school from the church that owned it.

"It sounded real nice when we walked in and just said some words. I was worried that we were gonna over-saturate it with instruments, having a 12-piece ensemble," Mason Jar Company member musician Dan Knobler told NPR. "But it has a certain charm to it."

As the Mason Jar Music Company found, the spaces aren’t just cheap, they contribute to the company's work in unexpected ways.

Implications - Disused and under-used buildings become impromptu work spaces that allow businesses, especially those with an artistic or social bent, to leverage undervalued assets in place of cash. Just as small castoffs like clothing and personal goods are reused and remade into new products, repurposing abandoned real estate into venues like pop-up retail, contra-plein-air art studios, and flash convention spaces opens opportunities for financially challenged enterprises to launch and thrive.